


Last of the Famous, International Playboys

by Slippery Kick (AceQueenKing)



Category: Tekken
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Sibling Incest, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 08:56:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5999842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/Slippery%20Kick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee Chaolan attempts to move on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last of the Famous, International Playboys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silvered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvered/gifts).



1\. This is how his life begins: in a garbage heap.

He is poor. He has parents, equally poor, and then he does not. He sleeps in the park, curls his toes in shoes stolen and several sizes too large. Sometimes, if he's lucky, he has some form of blanket: a newspaper, clothing casually thrown out by people better off than him. He gets help from support services sometimes, but gets more from the gang. He grows up knowing how to fight, one punch sometimes being the only thing between him and help, between him and death.

And then, abruptly, it changes: A kind Japanese business man catches his fight. Promises him riches, a rewarding life, a family. He signs.

It's a trap. The riches are there but denied to the chinese step-child. The rewarding life is the same life he's always lived: that of the wolf, struggling to survive. And the family, well… his new-found father is distant, his “brother” all but willing to shove his face through his expensive door.

And this is how he lives.

It is not all bad. His brother and he may hate each other, but they hate Heihachi more. At times there is softness between them,: touches, caresses between two boys trapped in hell. But this is rare, and never spoken of. And even if there are times he wants nothing more to do than snap Kazuya's neck, he finds himself stroking it tenderly instead.

“I'll kill him,” Kazuya swears as he kisses him fervently after school, something that's become routine enough that he's already locked the door and drawn the windows after Kazuya's stormed in.

“Not if I get to him first,” he vows each and every time, even when unbuckling Kazuya's pants.

They are molded by Heihachi's life lessons: kill the competition, fuck over who you can, and take what's yours.

And, in the fiery crucible of the Mishima house, he learns how to be a master at all three.

2\. This is how he dies, the first time: Kazuya, his sponsor and his brother and his employer all in one, is fighting his father in the ring. He hates him.

He roots for him anyway. Chaolan has chosen his side in Heihachi's eyes, and it matters little that Heihachi was dead.

It doesn't go well.

Kazuya's leg work is sloppy, his eyes too slow to follow Heihachi's movements. Still, Kazuya doesn't close his eyes as Heihachi puts him in a tight headlock; there is Kazuya, still struggling.

But Chaolan knows its over.

In his last moments, Kazuya's eyes are wide abysses, his mouth an undying and undignified scream and Chaolan feels his stomach fall as Heihachi turns Kazuya's neck and his brother, for the first and last time in his short life, knows fear.

And then it's done.

Kazuya falls to the mat, dead. Instant.

Heihachi waits for the ten count, which the shaken announcer still gives. Kazuya is quietly wheeled off the field in a stretcher; he's in “critical condition” for the crowd.

Of course, for Chaolan, it's obvious it's just a question of where Heihachi wants the death certificate signed. Officially, Kazuya Mishima's death will be ruled an accident. Perhaps even a tragic one, if Heihachi is good about courting the press.

Though with the Zaibatsu in his hands, it's doubtful he'll bother. Heihachi has never seen much value in good public relations.

His prodigal father shoves past him as he goes to the locker-room. The word _chankoro_ passes through Heihachi's lips and Chaolan knows his position in the Zaibatsu is over.

And with it, his life.

3\. This is how Violet's life begins: He's on the run. He has a little bit of money he's been embezzling from the Zaibatsu for years – not nearly the total sum of the Mishima millions, but enough to be comfortable. He goes half the world over – from Japan to the Bahamas. He changes his name. He dyes his hair.

He's just one of the hundreds of Chinese come to make their life in the bahamas. He's a minority, but not conspicious.

He stays quiet. He keeps busy.

He buys and sells stocks with his money, and trains with his time. Heihachi is getting older, complacent; sooner or later, he'll have an opportunity to end the old man and get what by all rights should be his.

This is the fire that consumes the first ten years he live his second life. The fire of vengeance burns bright in him, both for himself and Kazuya.

He mourns Kazuya, in his own way. He keeps a small shrine to him, one of Kazuya's spare blood red gloves. He doesn't get any ashes to put in it – Heihachi makes sure there's not much left of Kazuya, in the end.

He tries not to think about that too much. Or think about Kazuya too much. There are times, early on, when people talk of him, and Lee has to clench his fists and walk away because there's so much they just don't know about him.

He starts going to therapy after he sees Heihachi's face on a gigantic screen in a Sony store and he has a mild panic attack. It doesn't help. He's always too hesitant to say what really happened – even to him, the story is unbelievable. After a few months, he drops out of therapy.

He throws his time into the gym instead. He adopts a bit more Mishima style fighting into his own repertoire, though he doesn't dare compete in the underground circuit. He doesn't want Heihachi to find him before he's ready.

That was his brother's mistake. He won't let it happen again.

He keeps a low profile. He sees Heihachi call a third iron fist and he doesn't take the bait. Instead, he watches Jin Kazama come onto the scene and burn out just as quickly, and he knows it's the right choice.

In the Mishima family, lightning always seems to strike twice.

3\. This is how Violet Systems is born: Soon after the third tournament, he opens his own company because he has always loved electronics and has nothing to do. At first, he avoids competing with the Mishima Zaibatsu: he focuses on the domestics, butler bots and maid cafe robo-girls, not military R and D.

But then he sees Heihachi giving a speech. It's by accident, really – it's a busy convention, and he never even knew Heihachi was attending until he caught the unmistakable baritone while walking between the halls. Still, he stands by the door and listens to Heihachi's speech, when he's struck by something.

Heihachi is old.

Older even than in the third tournament, when he was sporting a wide shock of white hair. Now his eyes look old, tired. He wears reading glasses now. His words are hoarser, his skin wrinklier. His gait is slower.

Heihachi is succumbing to the ravages of time.

And suddenly, he isn't afraid of Heihachi anymore.

After that, he starts competing with the man more openly.

He starts to make subtle pokes at Mishima research and development; then, when that fails to produce any response, straight out copying and improving the Zaibatsu's standard robotic tech.

When those, too, fail to draw any sort of ire – or even notice! – he'd chosen to to dedicate his time to embarrassing Heihachi as much as possible. First it had been simple jabs: the boxing kangaroo fighting the dancing bear at Robo-Expo 2017; the two peaks of the antenna on the Butlerbot 1000 that he wouldn't deny were reminiscent of the Zaibatsu leaders long-standing bad hair but wouldn't exactly confirm as a homage either.

It's better, Chaolan thinks, to be hated than to be ignored. And so he takes up playing up his Violet Systems CEO persona; Violet is all leather-pants and hot swagger, the sort of personality that the Japanese public eats up but Heihachi loathes. He has his own harem of Violet girls who dance before every company announcement; he makes sure they make the front cover of nearly every trade publication that Heihachi once held a subscription to.

There are ways of getting revenge beyond retribution, he tells himself.

But it hasn't provde satisfying yet.

4\. This is how Violet dies: Heihachi calls for a fourth tournament and Violet decides to enter. For Lee Chaolan, it's a way to get revenge, a way to avenge himself and Kazuya and all the others that Heihachi has wronged. Opportunistically, it's also a time when there's no one as strong as he is in the ring besides Heihachi, and at fourty-eight Lee is quite sure that he can stand up to a seventy-five year old man.

For Violet, he enters the fourth tournament almost on a lark. Instantly, it's news, big news. Everyone wants an interview, and he chuckles and grins through them all. He's good and he knows it, and he's well able to seduce interviewers and the viewing public alike with a simple smile. His words always chosen to mask a carefully hidden truth: _I thought it would be a rush. You know. Put myself to the test._

He's well liked, charming; he jokes and smiles and twirls and when he gets his first match – against what social media tells him is a teenage girl, taking place on her schoolgrounds, he just smirks and whispers: Perfect.

A volley of schoolgirls from the Mishima Polytechnical Institute scream for him as he enters the ring, and he grins and points one finger toward the statue at the edge of the school.

 

His alma mater, though of course he can never reveal this without revealing his identity as well. He knows Heihachi has tried to ruin his chances by matching him up with this little girl. He knows it's meant as an insult. It should be a rating disaster for him.

But Heihachi, as usual, underestimates him.

“What ravishing beauty,” he murmurs, pressing a rose into the young teen's hands. She's seventeen – eighteen, perhaps – and certainly has never been kissed. No make-up, plain hair; her clothes simple and plain but not unappealing.

“What?” She says, her cheeks bright red. A girl hollers for her friend in the crowd, but Lee grins as Miharu concentrates on the rose. He cups her cheek for a moment and grins with carnal knowledge she can't even begin to imagine as the round begins and is rewarded with her cheeks turning a far darker shade of red.

It's a quick match: Miharu is thrown off her game and he barely has to tap her before she starts to miss. A clumsily timed kick is all he needs to get behind her and suplex her into the mat.

She grimaces, holders her stomach, and he wins the ten count easily.

He smiles and kneels down to her as the announcer shouts his victory. He grabs the mike as soon as the announcer makes sure everyone knows that he's won.

“Miharu, your fighting spirit and graceful charm has touched my heart.” He pauses there, waiting for the camera flashes and the roaring crowd. Good sports in the iron fist are rare, and few are as charming as him. Miharu looks at him with wide eyes, and he is sure the girl has never gotten so much attention before.

“How would you like to become one of my Violet girls?”

“Me?” She asks, putting a hand on her chest, and her looks is so unabashedly earnest that even he finds it charming.

“Of course!” He laughs. “Look at how the crowd loves you, Miharu!”

Miharu looks out into the crowd, into the throng of her fellow students, and quickly succumbs to peer pressure.

“Is it really….Are you sure?”

“Of course, Miharu.” He pulls her to her feet as the cameras blind them, flashbulbs popping so fast that he cannot help but hold her close. He can't resist looking toward Heihachi's skybox, though – the old man has become lavish in his old age – and grinning.

Heihachi had never understood the value of PR but Violet – ah, Violet is a master.

Victory is so close, he can taste it.

Soon, he mouths at the old man – no doubt the cameras will pick that up – and he wonders if Heihachi has realized yet that it is his prodigal son returning home.

\- - -

He knows he's pissed the old man off when he has his next match within minutes.

He receives his second opponent's name and a set of coordinates by the time he's back in the school's locker room. No note of course – Heihachi isn't the kind to be sentimental. He reads it once, and his stomach turns, because he certainly could not have read what he thought he did.

He reads the names on it repeatedly, a sense of dread burning his belly, his lips pressed in some variation of the sentence _it has to be a mistake._

_Mishima, Kazuya v Lee, Chaolan_

_Mishima Arena, 15:00_

Heihachi isn't the kind to be sentimental but this – this is beyond the pale. It's enough to reveal his own identity so quickly – this is how Heihachi works, a short and subtle stab straight to the gut – but Kazuya.

Kazuya.

He runs his fingers over Kazuya's name, the kanji all but faded from his fingers. It's been so long since he's written out those words, but they feel as familiar as his own name.

He closes his eyes and clenches his fists involuntarily as the memory of dark eyes consumes him; twenty years later and he still sees a knowing smirk on his lips. He thinks of those eyes, those fists – his first training partner and by all accounts his best.

There are emotions in there he hasn't thought of in a long time, and for the first time he wonders if provoking the tiger was perhaps wise.

He swallows; his throat suddenly dry. This is a message from Heihachi, no doubt, but what message? Is it a warning that he will wind up like the former Mishima heir? He remembers, still, Kazuya's face in the last few moments of that fight.

He stands on shaky legs as he starts to pull off the too-tight leather pants, shaking his head.

Whatever message Heihachi intends to send him, Lee Chaolan will make sure that it is a message received – and repaid.

\- - -

He doesn't allow himself to believe it's him. At first it's easy to deny it: the hips far too broad, the shoulders far too broad. And the scars...well, Kazuya's always taken pride in them, but he never had quite so many. And the eyes, well, Kazuya's eyes were always dark and distinctive, but _glowing red_ was never an attribute he would attribute to him.

At first he's angry, furious at Heihachi for sending this imposter just to rattle him.

And then Kazuya's fist hits his stomach, knocking the breath out of him.

Kazuya is cruel in their fight, as always. He hits hard, and Lee falters too often to mount much of an offense, his entire mind consumed by the thought that _it's you it's you it's you._

“ _Kazuya,”_ He whispers, as Kazuya grabs him by his hair. He forces him on his knees in a way that's nothing if not terrifying and vaguely erotic. “Say my name.”

He's all but daring Kazuya to unmask him in front of millions of strangers.

He doesn't.

Instead the lightning inherent in his fist crackles, and Violet feels a heavy thud, and then nothing.

When he wakes up, a slip of paper is in his pocket, with the words _Peninsula Hotel, 12:00_ written on it.

 

_\- - -_

 

He knows he shouldn't go, but he does.

The old wounds are opened up, the old flame rekindled.  
  
“I'll kill him,” Kazuya vows, and Chaolan can't help but smile.  
  
“Not if I get him first,” Lee says, tracing some of Kazuya's newer scars.

Neither of them mention how unlikely that is, given how Kazuya knocked him out of the competition.

Though, of course, that's why Heihachi pit them against one another.

They hate each other, but they hate Heihachi more.

He lights a cigarette and smokes, nude, on the twentieth floor of the Peninsula. If anyone can see him, he doesn't give a fuck. He looks across the way, watches boredly as one of the newer competitors – Fury, he thinks? – chases a wooden dummy around a hotel room. Judging by the shit he's breaking throwing that thing around, Lee is glad he's not footing the hotel bills this time around.

“Why did you change your appearance?” Kazuya asks, his nose wrinkling in traditional distaste. “Surely you must know how ridiculous you looked in those leather pants.”  
  
Chaolan shrugs.

“Some of us, Kazuya, have a sense of style."  
\- - -  

Two days later a “shocking expose” of Violet that reveals his troubled past is released to one of the biggest trade magazines in Japan.

Violet dies as he lived, in controversy.

5\. This is how Lee Chaolan is reborn: In flames. 

He leaves the tournament after he's kicked out, chuckles when Kazuya fails to overthrow Heihachi for a second time, and is vaguely alarmed when the next seven reports fail to mention anything about him at all.

There's a report at Hon-Maru, and nobody knows who got out of there alive. Heihachi is declared dead; Kazuya missing, presumed. Lee isn't convinced. If Kazuya can survive a broken neck _and_ a fall into lava, he can survive an explosion.  
  
So instead of immediately challenging his brother, Lee Chaolan sheds Violet like a snake sheds its skin. And then he waits. He hones his style. He introduces the Combot 3000 to record acclaim.

Doesn't help.  
  
He tries the therapist again. Doesn't work.

It's on the seventh day of the seventh month in the seventh hour after the tournament ended that he gets the news that a _new_ King of the Iron Fist tournament is going to be held.

He signs up the first day.

Stockholder stock be damned.

This time, he thinks, he'll take Kazuya, and then the Zaibatsu.

And this time, maybe, he'll finally feel complete.

**Author's Note:**

> chankoro is a Japanese ethnic slur for Chinese people. Heihachi is not nice. :(


End file.
